The Five Stages in the Life of a Successful Young Webmaster

Most people that I know who are fairly young and have had at least a moderate amount of success owning their own web sites have gone through the four stages that I am just about to talk about, myself included.

1. First, that initial phase of your life when you have made your first few dollars through affiliate marketing and have completely caught the bug. Every second of every day is spent planning out your campaigns and web sites. Every spare moment at night is spent working on your sites, networking with people, absorbing every shred of knowledge that has been posted online. You breathe, sleep and eat the affiliate marketing business, and even though you are hardly making any money right now, you know that this is what you want to do for the rest of your life, and you'll work your ass off to obtain it. Your friends and family may tell you to stop wasting your time and get a "real" job, but you see the potential and you aren't going to let anyone stop you. You may be going to school or working a full-time job, but you are spending every extra second working on your online business. Everyday you are making a little more progress towards your goal of making a lot of money online.

2. You start to make it. The money is rolling in. One month you are able to pay half of your rent with the proceeds from affiliate marketing; the next month you are able to make your entire rent payment AND your car payment. Pretty soon, you are easily covering your expenses and you still have some money left over. You are still working like a mad man at this stage, as you want to become RICH. You are plotting new markets that you can expand into, and you are working 14-16 hours per day on your new business. You buy some new toys, because you earned them - a new plasma TV, a new stereo in your car, a trip to Europe. Life is good.

3. You start to go into cruise control. The web sites are basically running themselves, so why not go out and have some fun? You start sleeping in, you start hitting the bar, you start taking longer and longer vacations. Pretty soon you are down to working just a couple hours per day, down from 14-16 hours per day in the early days. You are making good money, so why not enjoy yourself? You are living the dream, and you are enjoying every second of it.

4. Things start to fall apart, due to your lack of effort. Maybe traffic starts to drop and you lose a big advertiser. Maybe your campaigns aren't converting as well as you would like. Maybe Google decided to "slap" your web site in some way. All of a sudden your income is halved, or worse. Suddenly you regret all of those days that you took off..

5. You start working like a dog again. You re-invigorate your web sites. Suddenly your income spikes, and you are making more than ever. Now, instead of buying "toys", you are saving money and investing directly into your business. You are no longer "new rich" .. now you are "old rich", taking care of your finances and not getting carried away or taking things for granted. This is what you want to do for the rest of your life, and you are never going to slack off again.